Pravin Tambe had not even played a top-level game for a first-class side when he was picked from obscurity at the age of 41, by Rajasthan Royals for IPL 2013. The legspinner had toiled for several years as a club cricketer in Mumbai while still holding down a day job. Until the Royals scouts spotted his talent, his closest brush with top-level cricket came when he was named in the Mumbai Ranji probables in 2000. During the early seasons of the IPL, Tambe worked as a liaison officer whenever matches were played at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. He played his first recognised Twenty20 against Delhi Daredevils, in 2013. He grabbed the spotlight in the Champions League T20 later that year, when he was the competition's leading wicket-taker with 12 scalps in five games at an average of 6.50, better than the likes of Sunil Narine and R Ashwin. That led to the long-awaited Mumbai Ranji call-up in the domestic season that followed.

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